VCMI for Android

VCMI4Droid working nice, but performance on Galaxy Note 2 sucks. Ofc. game is playable :stuck_out_tongue:

Fervi

Another release. Yay.

github.com/Fayth/vcmi-android/r … elease.apk (160MB)
github.com/Fayth/vcmi-android/r … ase.apk.7z (the same file as above but 40MB)

Some technical changes:

  • the biggest change (but not very important from the player’s perspective) is that I gave up on gradle-experimental build and returned to stable gradle (+external cmake), because it felt really unstable and required some nasty hacks to work “correctly”; additionally I changed ndk to newest version (r15 b1) and replaced libc++ with gnustl, because it’s more stable and “default” in ndk
  • at the moment, due to the previous point, the application doesn’t work correctly on armeabi (compiler crashes during SDL build) or api <21 (runtime crashes, probably due to some boost<>ndk conflicts); oh well, according to google, ~70% of phones are 5.0+ already; I’ll be monitoring ndk/gradle updates, hopefully it gets fixed at some point
  • you need to uninstall previous version before installing this one (different app signing because of release mode and stuff)
    Functional changes:
  • everything is compiled in release mode and should work much quicker (haven’t played enough to see big difference in-game, but app startup on my phone was ~12s previously and is ~3s in this version)
  • app should no longer crash/hang when it goes into background or screen is turned off (hopefully),
  • due to the fact that android can kill application in background at any time it wants to, vcmi now tries to make autosave when the app is about to be killed (_Android_Autosave file); not guaranteed to work, because it’s not very elegant solution for now,
  • better relative cursor mechanics (as discussed in previous posts) + relative pointer speed multiplier setting in launcher,
  • added adventure map swipe support (as an alternative to relative pointer); doesn’t feel very smooth but should be functional (launcher -> pointer mode -> “normal with map swipe”)
  • added sound/music settings in launcher (because it’s irritating that these can’t be changed right away after starting the game :wink: ),
  • launcher should correcly preserve all vcmi config settings (previously launcher would drop settings that it didn’t understand (everything except resolution and codepage))
  • back button should now work like alt+f4 (closes app if in menu, displays exit confirmation if in-game)

Awesome!

Can you post it on Google Play? Did you try to contact xyz recently?

I don’t have any private google dev account so I can’t. I could provide an unsigned package if anyone wants to put it there (or provide signing info to vcmi team). I never really contacted xyz.

I registered developer account in Google Play for that purpose and paid fee some time ago.
I’ll try to contact XYZ and ask if he can transfer package ownership to me.

PS: I sent developer console invites to Fay, Warmonger and AVS.

Also sent Slack invite to xyz and hopefully he can help us. Shouldn’t be too hard:
support.google.com/googleplay/a … 0247?hl=en
And of course I sent to to xyz to in case he need some account credentials for transfer.

Ok. @xyz sent request to transfer app to my developer console.
There also signing keys for app that I’ll need grant to Fay.

Okay, I accepted the invitation.

Things to consider:

  • I’m not very good with legal stuff, but I’m pretty sure I’ll need to add some info about 3rd party libraries and possibly a privacy policy as well (google has recently become way more strict about it)
  • keep in mind that the app is currently build against vcmi/develop (b7a19fd); wouldn’t it be better to wait for stable version?
  • I didn’t test the last version extensively (only my device + few emulators) so it’s hard to say if it works correctly everywhere

If we plan to update the existing app, it becomes more complicated.

  • app will still need to use id “is.xyz.vcmi” – I’m pretty sure it’s not possible to change it for already-published apps
  • at the moment I’m not certain what to do about the update process; I use slightly different way of handling OH3 data files so the new app won’t detect previously added files

I’ll try to look into it and and ping some Android developers I know and in IRC.

No good answer for this. One important point: is all code changes merged in develop?
If no this is what you need to start with. We’ll also benefit if you join our organization on github and move build system repository here.

And for building stable version I really not sure if it’s worth to wait since this would be quite long waiting probably. Like I wish to have tons of time to test and merge everything, but I only have so much… :frowning:

In same time we don’t have any working version for Android at all so I don’t think we’ll make it worse.

Is that a problem at all? I don’t think anyone care what package name is and if xyz going to get some weird credit for his previous work that not problem too.

That’s better to be solved one way or another.

Is there any way to detect when application was updated from older version? If there is then it’s would be enough to notify users who updated it that path files changed and they need to move assets. I doubt anyone seriously playing older version since it’s wasn’t really playable at time, many might have it installed.

Also once we get new version I want owner of this one to get it unlisted:
play.google.com/store/apps/deta … vcmi&hl=en
Or if he agrees he can transfer ownership too. Then we could update it once and suggest to install another app instead and then unlist it so it’s not confusing anyone.

Well, technically I am an android dev. :stuck_out_tongue:
3rd party licenses definitely should be placed somewhere in the launcher.
Don’t know about policy, because vcmi doesn’t really do anything with user data – the only thing that could qualify is probably sdcard reading/writing.

Do you mean my changes in vcmi? Currently they’re here github.com/Fayth/vcmi/tree/android-support – I can start a pull request to vcmi/develop if that’s what you mean… probably not today though. I tried to wrap all android-specific logic in VCMI_ANDROID define so hopefully the won’t be any problems, but currently I don’t have any environment installed to check if the desktop version complies correctly.

Sure. I think it’s a good idea that vcmi team has the ownership over this.

If you feel that the current vcmi/develop version is stable enough to be published then there’s no problem on my side.

No technical problems. Only the fact that google suggests that your app’s id should reflect the domain that you own. But it’s not really a problem, because it’s not a hard rule, just a guideline.

No built-in mechanism. Usually apps just save previously launched version number and check it on startup.
In our case, we should probably try to detect datafiles in the old location and move them if possible. Should be doable.

Sadly this is something I have like zero idea about so all I can do is just google it.

Just create pull request and Travis will compile it. :wink:

We’ll also be able to find if there something need to be fixed.

Welcome to team! If seriously we obviously not give everyone access to main repository since not everyone actually need them, but I think github have teams inside organizations so there no problem to invite you and then let you control repositories you want and non-develop branch.

Warmonger / AVS might need comment on this though since I don’t have full permissions on github.

I don’t think it’s stable, but it’s far better than 0.97 for sure.

I think they forgive us. Or we could ask for ownership over other package later that in fact represent our domain.

VCMI Organization membership give no additional access, only Teams do and on repository level. There is no way to control access to individual branches

@Fay I`ve sent invitation

There is. GitHub allow to limit pushes to protected branches from certain teams:
help.github.com/articles/about- … -branches/

So for instance we can let Fay to keep Android-specific changes in main repository branch even without giving develop (protected branch) push access. Of course we can also just ask nicely to not push directly anything unless it’s absolutely obvious and tested fix.

Okay, so I accepted the invitation and created the pull request.

Currently I can’t transfer the launcher project, because “You don’t have the permission to create repositories on vcmi”.

I suppose you need permissions to create repositories.

BTW I also need it since I want to upload server configuration to github organization.

Repository creation should be allowed now.

@Fay
Another thing I want to request once you have free time for that.
Try to setup Android build for Travis CI, it’s will be really helpful.

I transferred the launcher repo to vcmi ( github.com/vcmi/vcmi-android ).

I can look at the CI config after android support pull request is sorted out.
In theory it should be possible to automate the build without much problem (because it already works kinda automatically via the python script), but at the moment I’m not sure what I need to specify there. Anyway, I will check that out.

Maybe a long shot, but dailies for android build?

This is one of two reasons why we need CI. Since we now have plenty space to host them there will be at least builds for Windows and OSX from Travis.